FMA time travel challenge
by S4A4M
Summary: A begining is always a good place to start anew. I had this idea but am reluctant to try and finish it. So I post only the seed of an idea and hope that someone will have the will to nourish it so that it blooms into an all out story.


A beginning of a FMA Time Travel fic. Could be in Anime-verse or Manga/FMA-Brotherhood-verse. The Elrics create a time travel array, that puts them back in time on the night of their unfortunate attempt to resurrect their mother.

Just to make it more interesting:

I have only one requirement for any interested in taking up this story: Elrics can't outright lie. They couldn't in the series and they can't now. They can say things that are ambiguous, use half-truths and leave things unsaid for others to fill in the blanks on their own, but they can't lie somebody to the face.

* * *

The cellar was dark and the air was stuffy. A white and blue alchemical circle drawn on the floor. The oil lamps giving little light. Two silhouettes lay on the ground. A pound of blood layered the floor. It was eerily silent. Outside the Storm raged. One body moved slightly. Stirring itself awake.

"Brother, did it work?" a little voice came out and then a shout. "Brother! Brother are you alright?!"

He scrambled around pushing himself from the ground and tumbling towards the other figure in the room. The other stirred, coming around.

"Al.." he rasped, groggily coming awake, before becoming hyperly aware. "It worked! Shit! It worked! Fucking Hell! Al! Al!" he almost jumped up seeking his brother out with his eyes. "You're you! You got your body! Holy fuck! You're ten!" he ranted as he shook. Then a scream shook his body.

"A price has been paid. You have to be what you're meant to be." A irritating raspy voice come out of nowhere. "Don't disappoint me, alchemist."

"Brother!"

And all went black.

-===+++FMA+++===-

When Lieutenant Colonel Mustang came running to the Rockwell house he didn't know what he would be seeing. He just knew it would be something awful. Gore. Gruesome. He wasn't prepared for what he saw. Not in the least.

"What did you do?!" he almost shouted.

He saw the circle in the cellar, he saw the blood, he felt the alchemy. He drew conclusions.

"What did we do?" asked the Kid in the wheel chair.

He was smirking, the little shit was smirking at him. And the little shit's younger brother was all but laughing outright.

"You tried human transmutation!" he growled, his jaw tight with fury.

"We didn't 'try'." was the calm answer, eyes twinkling. The Colonels fury grew.

"You did the taboo." he clenched his teeth.

"No, we didn't. At least not this time."

"What?!"

"We didn't try to bring back the dead last night." the answer came from the younger one.

"What?!" he blinked, then blinked again, then a shiver run through his spine. He took a deep breath and tried to find reason within this madness. "I've been to your house, I've seen the circle, now I find a kid without a leg and an arm. What did you do?"

"We're trying to put things right." came a calm response. "If you took the time to investigate like you should, you would've found that the circle on the floor hadn't ever been activated. You can't bring a person back. My arm and leg were the price for that knowledge. But you can't pin the Taboo on us for that."

The Colonel sagged. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to say. He didn't know how to react to a boy who was so very calmly taking to losing his limbs to alchemy that shouldn't have been preformed. He came here to investigate the claims about a brilliant alchemist children. What he found in that house scared the shit out of him, but this boys where all another world away.

"So what did you do?" he asked. "If not human transmutation, then what?"

"We did a human transmutation yesterday," the younger one replied. "we just didn't try to bring our Mother back."

"What?!" This went waaay over his head. He studied human transmutation, he knew the circle in that basement was an attempt to bring back the dead. Even if it was the most complicated and complete one he ever seen. They told him they never activated it. But the kid was missing limbs and they confirmed they preformed something. It was right at this moment that he realized that these siblings knew more about the forbidden art then he did and they weren't talking.

He looked at the boys across the table, scowling again.

"What did you do? What kind of knowledge requires an eleven year olds leg and arm as payment? Why is there a resurrection circle painted on the floor of your basement? Why…" he shivered and sat down in his chair, putting his arms over his head.

The brothers glanced at each other, silent conversation taking place. The exchange didn't go unnoticed by Mustang, nor by his Lieutenant. The younger brother blinked, then took a deep breath.

"We wanted to bring our mother back. We knew the Taboo, but we researched and studied and we came up with a completed circle you saw in our house." he paused for a second and there was something in both boys that made Roy question his observations. It was like suddenly they both were much older, but Al moved to speak again and the shadow passed. "Now, we know something was missing, something vital and priceless. We didn't know what. But one day we were at school and the teacher mentioned a model of a train. A small thing that made sure that everything was like it was supposed to be. And which would not cause a catastrophe if it went wrong." Roy wondered what they classed as a catastrophe if what he saw was not a one. "That's why we researched more and came up with a circle that would work like a model. Show us the most probable result, without actually performing the alchemy. It's a different circle, one use only. You have to design it again for every new array you wish to use it on. It takes the array and then you put other things and it's like a trail run. It glows green if the array works like it's supposed to. And blue if there are flaws in the ingredients, yellow if the circle is written wrong or uncleanly and red if the alchemy is most likely to blow up in your face. Only it didn't glow this time." he finished softly.

Mustang was blown away. Even trying to imagine an array that could do what the boy had described was too much for him. He didn't have a slightest idea how to design such a thing, not even where to begin research in a possibility like that. These boys… these boys had done something incredible and unimaginable… and they paid a tremendous price for that knowledge. And as if what he heard was not enough, the older, crippled brother started talking.

"We activated the array. It was the most powerful transmutation we ever did. And we landed in front of the Gate. We saw what would happen if we tried to bring mom back." he closed his eyes and his face clenched painfully. "Then the price had to be paid. I'm older so I took the responsibility. And we were back."


End file.
